


Crawl your way home

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Castration, Fic Exchange, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Past Abuse, References to Suicide, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theon is dying slowly. Asha is waiting. A storm is brewing somewhere far out to sea. (Or, alternately - how Theon survives, how Asha hates waiting, and how quiet it can get in the eye of a storm.)</p><p>Written for got_exchange on livejournal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crawl your way home

Theon goes into the hold near as soon as they arrive on the ship and doesn't come out. He doesn't want to go to Pyke, she knows, misses Winterfell, misses the frightened girl that had spent every spare moment clinging to him with fragile little fingers. But he has to go with her. No one else in Westeros will have him, and certainly not alive. So Asha lets him hide away, if he must.

Asha's not gentle, but she's not stupid, either, and she's not going to force this issue. 

She can wait.

\---

Waiting gets old after a day or two of still seas and flat weather. She'd rather the Storm God set his fiercest typhoon upon them than this… nothing, this windless wasteland of salt water and more salt water in every direction. This _waiting_.

It's not long before she's stomping into the hold to find him - if only to have something to _do_ , some battle that she can fight.

"You'll die if you don't eat, Theon," she says by way of greeting, as the door's still swinging from the force of her boot. He flinches at the noise, but doesn't look up. He doesn't like to look at her, she's noticed. She doesn't like to look at him, either - the withered sack of skin and bones that speaks with what must have once been her brother's voice, that looks at her with her brother's eyes - but she does. She's strong enough to bear it, and if he won't look, she'll bear it for both of them.

He doesn't look up, but he shakes his head at the floor, slowly, like the dust and cobwebs are who he means to speak to. "I won't," he says, softly, "I don't ever," and he sounds afraid of the fact.

Asha's grip tightens on the doorjamb. She knows what she'd do in any other situation, knows she'd knock heads and yell orders and get this sorted as quickly as possibly. Still kind of wants to, want to shake him, wants to hit him, wants to _make_ him get better. She won't chance it, though, won't risk the possibility of cracking his brittle bones, of ravaging him further.

"I suppose we'll see," she replies, considers stomping off to take care of other matters, but Theon doesn't seem overtly aware of her presence. Doesn't seem aware of much, really. There are moments when he reminds her of the man he'd' once been - quick tongued and ruthless with his smiles - times he'll snap back into himself, if only briefly. It's a show, a farce, a mask over damaged skin, but it brings her scant comfort, which is more comfort than she's used to of late.

But those moments are few and far between, so if it's all the same to him - vacant and gutted, the stinking shell in the corner - she thinks she'd like to stay with him.

Thinks she'd like to wait.

\---

Every time a storm hits, he lights up, if only a little bit. The winds are howling, waves are crashing, and her brother is smiling an unfamiliar, quiet smile, huddled in his usual corner.

"You want to die, don't you?" she barks at him once it's over, the boil of battle still in her blood, the thrill of near death, of open seas and the fight she was made for. Theon doesn't answer her, - doesn't speak often, no matter how much she waits - but the smile does drop off of his face, and he looks away.

Asha takes that as a yes.

\---

Asha worries. She is unused to the feeling, to the gnawing in the pit of her chest, of the way her stomach shakes and drops every time she heads for that thrice-damned door, each day half-expecting to find him hung, or bleeding out on the floor, or just _gone_. He's always there, though, always slumped and scared and ruined - and that's almost worse. She's used to tackling things head on, suited to addressing an issue as soon as she's confronted with it. Waiting is a coward's game.

But when she looks at the old man that had surely been a boy not a few years ago, she becomes a coward. This is a battle that she doesn't know how to fight. She's not sure Theon knows, either - or, if he does, whether he'd want to bother.

Because _ruined_ is the right word, isn't it? Ramsay Snow has ruined her brother, has taken from him whatever he had once been, and left a shell, a fragile husk of a person who is no good to Asha, no good to anyone, least of all himself. If she had any mercy, she'd slit his throat for him here and now, and put an end to the suffering.

Instead she waits. It's _merciless_ , but she waits.

\---

It's the middle of the night - after a particularly rough round of fucking with Qarl - lying exhausted in her captain's chambers, half-asleep, when Asha fully realizes that she's not waiting for Theon to get better, not waiting for him to find himself, to conquer his fears, to grow back into a person.

She's waiting for him to die.

\---

She stands in the doorway again the next day. There's rope in the hold, plenty of rusted nails, unused spikes - plenty of ways to kill him. Plenty of ways for him to kill himself. She watches him watching her, and thinks, _do it already_. He doesn't, barely moves for the longest time, and it's not until a mate comes to fetch her that she realizes she's missed half the day, down here in this cold, little hell her brother's created for himself.

Asha sends the mate off ahead of her, intends to follow him, but first she walks further into the room than she ever has thus far, about halfway to where Theon is curled up in the far corner. The smell of him grows with every step, and it's overpowering, isn't it? They'd given him a cursory washing down through his clothes with a bucket of water at first, but other than that, it's unlikely he's truly bathed at all in recent months. Part of her wants to grab him, just pull him off to her room and scrub him down and _demand_ that he get better - but it's not that easy, is it? She wants to speak to him, but - for a woman who fears very little - she finds herself scared off by the madness that she knows she'll find waiting there. At least he'd stopped rhyming once they'd set out to sea.

She does none of that, however, just slips a hand into her boot and pulls out a small knife, dropping it down on the floor before him. She's tired of waiting.

Theon stares at it for a long time, like it takes him a bit to realize what's even happening, but when he does, he seems truly surprised. "You want me to kill myself?" he asks after a moment, and his voice creaks with disuse.

"Do you want to kill yourself?" she asks sharply. Her voice always comes out sharp with him, like she doesn't know how to speak to her little brother in any other way. "Because it's fairly clear to me that you don't want to live."

His brow furrows, and he curls further into himself, and he doesn't smile, but his eyes sparkle with an ugly, sad sort of amusement as he whispers, "What is dead may never die," like it's a horrifying secret, and a grand jest at the same time.

"But rises again, harder and stronger," she replies, almost without meaning to. It's instinctive, it's her prayer, her words. It's easy to forget that they're his words, too.

"That scares me," he says softly, looking up at her for maybe the first time that day, speaking to her with something other than fearful nonsense. She's not quite sure what he means, but also fairly certain she understands. His thoughts are no longer governed by reason, and trying to use such to interpret his words will most certainly end in terrifying confusion.

"Everything scares you," is all that she says in response, though, snapping more disdainfully than she means to. "With good reason, perhaps, but there it is. Die if you must. We'll cast your body into the sea. You can cower just as well in the corners of the Drowned God's hall as you can here." She nearly spits the words, and feels the sharp pains of guilt strike her chest at the very same moment that relief floods her, a weight lifted away. She is not his mother, and his mother is not of sound mind, so struggling as he is in the midst of this war, he'll have to take care of himself, either way.

Life or death - whatever he should choose, it will be by his own hand. Anything else would be cruel to the both of them.

Asha turns on her heel and stomps out the door and up to the main deck, where the skies are showing the beginnings of a storm, hanging not far off in the distance.

\---

The foremast is already cracked by the time he comes up from below - the first time he's ventured out in the whole of the voyage - and he just watches as she rushes with her crew, desperate to secure the main sail, desperate to keep them afloat, desperate to see the storm through. Theon just stands there, in the midst of all the chaos, of the fearful yells and the certain knowledge on all of their faces that this could be the last night any of them will see - he stands there and seems to be made glad by it.

The winds are rougher by far than she's felt them in years, and waves crash up and over the hull with the force of a God's anger, and she wonders if the Drowned God had heard her, had been made angry by her words to her brother, had thought the offer of death was close enough to kinslaying to be punishable - or if it is just a storm. If the Gods truly do not care for their mortal squabbles one way or the other, if it is just by chance that they are caught in what must surely be the most violent storm in years.

Or maybe it's for him. She's shouting orders, turning this way and that, but her eyes keep finding their way back to Theon. He's still in the center of the deck, as the winds swirl around him, appearing not to have any effect at all, and the salt spray hits him and he doesn't seem to feel it. Like the eye of a storm, the look on his face is peaceful as he stares out in the vast, tumultuous sea. Maybe it's for him.

Maybe it's deliverance.

But then Asha's feet are in the air, the planks of the deck out from under her, and she is up and away. Tossed off by a particularly hard knock of the ship, flying out towards the open sky, and then down to the secret depths of the ocean. She doesn't have time to consider what's happening, to realize that she is gone, probably seconds from a watery death. It happens much too fast, and her eyes remain locked on Theon the entirety of the short few seconds that she hangs suspended in the wild winds, before hitting the surface of the waves with a brutal smack.

And as she sinks into the sea, she has a brief flash - an image, perhaps conjured by her own mind rather than truly seen - of her brother's pale, hollow face following her down.

\---

The scent of salt and sun-dried wood is sharp when she wakes, and as she feels the familiar uncomfortable press against her cheek, she briefly assumes that Qarl has knocked her out of bed with those useless elbows of his again, and that she'll have to spend the morning punishing him for such disrespectful conduct to his captain. Then she feels the first wave. It crashes over her head with not overmuch force, but it feels like a typhoon, like a punch to the gut, like a welcome to her last day. Asha's eyes flicker open and the first thing she sees - just as it had been the last - is her brother.

Theon is curled up next to her in his bedraggled, waterlogged cloak, forehead not a few inches from her own, and shivering with the force of a thousand storms. Asha's shivering, too.

"Theon," she says, near immediately, shoving a hand out to shake him awake. Even through the thick material of his clothing, she can feel the outlines of his bones, and her fingers yearn to recoil from the touch. She doesn't let them, though, just keeps shaking him.

If he's shivering, he's alive. If he's shivering, he's alive. "Theon, wake up," she barks, but her throat is rough and salty, and it hurts her to speak. Instead of quieting, she just yells louder. "Theon!"

She doesn't think about the weakness in her voice, about the desperation, doesn't consider that this is something she had more or less asked of him not a day ago. But now, here, floating on a hunk of broken wood - perhaps off her ship, perhaps off another caught in the storm - surrounded by nothing but the calm, quiet, never-ending ocean, there is no thought so terrifying, so gutting, as the idea that her brother might be dead.

_If he's shivering, he's alive._

But for how long?

"Theon," she barks again. He doesn't respond. And then the thought hits her, and disgusting as it surely is, she is not one to abandon a possible solution, not matter how ugly it may be. Her voice quiets, and she whispers, "Reek," right up next to his ear. Has heard him repeat it to himself enough times to know the significance, to know the fear it instills.

Theon chokes awake not a moment later, sputtering water and gasping for breath, grabbing onto her without realizing what he's doing, face a masked of confused terror.

Fear keeps men alive, after all.

\---

He's calms after a while, either forgets what she'd said to wake him, or pretends that he does, and lies there, staring up into the calm blue of the sky. He's still soaked and shivering, but the ends of his pale hair are beginning to dry in the sunlight, and he looks like he may be content to die like this. Unfortunately for him - and probably more so for herself - Asha is no longer content to let him.

She needs a plan, she needs an escape route, she needs to _do something_. She is _so_ tired, though, shaken through with salt and sea water, exhausted with the force of the storm, the force of this war, the force of her brother's entire existence. He'd put himself in the hold, but she'd left him down there - left him like she'd left him at Winterfell, that last day, that day that she'd decided to leave it up to him to do the right thing, to do the smart thing. How wonderfully that had worked out. And then she'd gone and done it again.

Theon never does anything right. Never has, even in their youth. He'd tried, though, hadn't he? Jumped into the water during last night's storm not to end his life, so much as to try and preserve hers - she thinks, at least, and has such confirmed when he blinks wearily at her after an hour or so, and asks, in a harsh, scraping whisper, "Did I save you?"

She doubts it. He's barely strong enough to hold himself upright, let alone drag her to the surface. If anything had saved them, it had been chance, or luck, or the Drowned God below - not Theon's thin, breakable arms and already crushed spirit. She has absolutely no desire to tell him such, though.

"Yes," she says, with a smile that is not false, but not exactly kind, either. "Yes, Theon."

He smiles back, softly and closed-mouthed - he rarely smiles with his mouth open anymore - and then curls up closer to her, like he's done, like he's ready to float out to sea and die now. He may be proud to save her, but he clearly has no interest in saving himself, and doesn't appear to realize that, at this point, those two things are interlinked.

So be it. If he's going to survive, then it's her who is going to have to save him. She's going to have to save them both.

\---

She's not sure how many hours it's been, but at some point she's overcome with the sharp, gnawing sensation that they're already dead. That they're floating to the ends of the world, and their journey will only end when they reach the hall of the Drowned God. They should be sinking, then, though, shouldn't they? Perhaps they are, and Asha just doesn't realize it.

Or perhaps Theon is not going where she's going. Perhaps those gnarled, red trees that he loves so much now - those Old Gods with their monstrous faces that he would stare into for hours back on the mainland, that he would _speak to_ \- perhaps they've claimed him.

Perhaps he'd prefer it that way.

\---

When night falls, his shivering triples and the only thing Asha can think to do is to pull him closer, tuck his worn, white head against her breast and keep him close, keep him warmed with her own frozen limbs - and it's not enough, not nearly enough, but it's something.

"Robb?" he whispers blearily, blinking awake at some point in the night, and Asha's stomach rocks with the word, but she isn't surprised. Or, if she is, tells herself that she shouldn't be. The King in the North had been more her brother's brother than she had ever been his sister - and if dashing Robb Stark were here now, she'd allow that Theon would be welcome to him, to crawl back, to beg forgiveness, to suffer tenfold of what he's already suffered, if it so suited him.

But Robb Stark is dead, and Asha is not, so she says, "No, Theon," brushing the limp, dried strands of his hair out of his cloudy eyes with the tips of her frozen fingers. "It's just me. It's your sister."

He tenses for a moment, but not by much, and he is maybe too weak to find fault with these facts, or either too used to disappointment - but after a moment, he simply nods, and curls up closer against her. She thinks, perhaps, he'll die like that - thinks it in that vague, half-thought way you do when you're too wearied to form full thoughts. Thinks, perhaps, if she lets herself, she could die here, too.

But Asha knows how she will go, and it involves an axe in each hand and being surrounded on all sides by foes a fuck of a lot more terrifying than foamy waves and bits of driftwood.

She doesn't close her eyes the whole night.

\---

Doesn't plan to, anyway, but she finds herself blinking awake not a few hours later, and it's not so bad, not anything to panic about - not until her bleary eyes focus on the empty expanse of wood, bare but for her own body, and the whole world flips over as her heart finds its way into her mouth. She swerves around, looking in every direction with a rapid, unhinged pace that is part dizziness, part abject fear.

She spots the tips of three fingers, and then she's diving, hitting the surface of the water like hitting stone, and breaking right through. He's not heavy, not so much anymore, and when Asha wraps her arms around Theon's sinking body and tugs him back up, it's less his weight that makes the journey hard, and more her own quickly depleting breath. They break through the tops of the dark waves in time, though, meeting the night sky like a familiar friend, letting it wrap them up in the calming ease of the shadows, of not being able to clearly look one another in the face.

Asha tugs him back up onto their makeshift raft and crawls her way up after him, then just lies there, taking in great gulps of air and wondering why she'd even bothered. Theon's barely conscious as it is, and he quickly drifts off into another of his usual torment-ridden slumbers, shaking and whispering half-formed sentences that don't mean anything to her, but seem to frighten the very life out of him.

She can't quite bring herself to care for his sufferings at this point, and briefly considers just shoving him back into the sea and letting him have his deliverance, or if not that, simply his end.

Asha can't quite bring herself to do that, either.

\---

He falls into the ocean several more times, as the waves grow stronger, less calm, and she catches him every time, pulls him back up every time. Keeps him above water every time. She thinks maybe he mumbles something like half a _'thank you,"_ once or twice, but she's not sure. It doesn't matter, anyhow. That's not the reason why she's doing it.

\---

They get picked up at some point after she's sure they've already drowned, thick arms wrapping around her, lifting her into the air, and her hands lock automatically around the small bunches of Theon's cloak she still grips in tight fists. The body that looms over her tries to unclench them, and she shoves at it instinctively.

There's a muffled grunt from above. "That the thanks I get for fishing you out of the sea?"

Dim lamplight flashes before her eyes as she blinks them open, focusing on the smooth, familiar face looming above her. Asha tries to speak, and thick salt water chokes out of her throat, instead. Qarl just watches on as she hacks and splutters on the planks of the deck, curling away from him to bury her face in her elbow. She feels sick and wasted, like a dead thing tricked back into life. Someone gives a booming shout, and suddenly there are voices appearing all around her, going up in a semi-drunken, but no less enthusiastic for it, cheer.

"And so she lives," Qarl smarms, extending a hand to drag her into sitting position. "Glad to have you back, Captain."

She lets him pull her up, struggling slightly when her other hand doesn't come with the rest of her. She frowns down at the fist still clenched in Theon's tattered cloak, and her chest sputters and burns for an instant, before he groans and rolls over.

Asha lets him go, finally on ground solid enough for her to breathe somewhat easy, and stumbles into Qarl's shoulder. "My hero," she says dryly, voice still slightly choked, but the humor is tangible nonetheless. He smirks back, and if there's something like blessed relief in his eyes, he plays it off, and she lets him, allowing him to half-drag her in the direction of her cabin.

"Back in the hold, then?" someone asks - roughly, uncaringly - kicking a foot in the vague direction of where Theon huddles on the ground. She half wants to say yes, to abandon her groggy, half-formed vows to protect him as the effects of delirium, a childish wish outgrown by the reintroduction of the realities of her life. 

The other half is just far too tired to pretend that she doesn't care. "No," she calls back, continuing with Qarl in the direction of her chambers, "with me." She'll not wait any longer.

If the response is a surprise, not a man lets it show.

\---

It had only been a day, Qarl tells her. The ship is in need of some repairs, but it'll still float while they fix her up, and Asha and her brother had only been lost out in the sea for a day. She nods, like she accepts the information, like it makes sense to her. She says nothing about it having felt like weeks and weeks and weeks.

\---

She wakes, as she has grown used to of late, with Theon's hair tickling her face. As she blinks awake, sitting up, she finds a plate of cheese and hardbread thrust into one hand, a pitcher of water the other. 

"Eat," Qarl says, "drink."

He's been doing that a lot. Every time she'd struggled awake in the night, he'd been there, expression passive and unworried as he'd poured enough water down her throat that she'd thought she was more like to drown than she had been in the sea. At this point, she'd rather drink something else, anyway.

She bites off a hunk of bread, not bothering to finish chewing before she orders him to get her some rum, and something for Theon to eat as well. He pauses briefly, but knows better to argue, and once he's out the door and she's eaten her fill, she turns to where he brother is curled up next to her. He's awake, she knows, might have been for longer than she, but there's no way to tell. "Theon," Asha begins, but she's not sure what she wants to say, so she ends, rather unimpressively, with, "you need to wash."

At least, she thinks it's unimpressive, but with the way his head flies up, eyes going wild and wide and _terrified_ , she might have announced that she plans to have him gutted and thrown back into the ocean or some such. He shakes his head. "No."

"Yes, Theon." She makes sure to say the name as often as she can, _his name_ , and not that - not the other. "You need to wash, and you need to eat, and you need to live." She'll not have any arguments on the subject. He cares little for his life, she knows, so she'll care enough for the both of them.

He pushes away from her, stumbling back and off of the cot, trying to get away, but his legs are weak and his head is surely as dizzy as her own - dizzier, even - and he crumbles against the far wall, curling up and sliding down, trying to get as far away from her as possible. Finding himself another corner.

He shakes his head as she comes to settle in front of him - not standing tall above or even crouched, as if reaching out to a wild animal - just sits down cross-legged in front of him, like she had when they were children. "Theon," she starts, but he shakes his head again, ducking away from the hand that comes up to smooth his hair out of his eyes.

"You said I could die," he insists, like she's just taken away his one hope of salvation, and he's trying his hardest to gain it back. "You said I should - "

"I've changed my mind," she interrupts, "alright?" She cups the side of his face with perhaps a bit more force than is gentle, but it's the amount that's needed, turning his head, making him look her in the eyes. "If you've any interest in dying, you'll have to take it up with me. And if you recall your childhood correctly, you'll remember that when we fight, I _always_ win." She hopes the reference to better times will perhaps bring him out of whatever hole he's digging for himself, but he just shakes his head again.

"We're not children, Asha," he says quietly, and she's caught off guard by how self-aware he seems in that moment - like he _knows_ he is mad, _knows_ he is ruined. And he may indeed be right, but Asha cannot manage to care overmuch.

"Perhaps not," she tells him, "but we're not so old yet that we must needs die. So we'll wash, and we'll live."

Theon shakes his head again, but he's not trying to get away any longer at least, almost seems to lean into the touch of her hand. "I can't," he says softly.

"Can't what?" she asks, trying not to be overly forceful, but terribly ill used to gentleness, so that the tone comes out somewhere in between. "Wash?"

He looks away. "He'll know," he tells her, "he _always_ knows."

And Asha really quite wishes that Ramsay Bolton were here now, were right here in her cabin, so that she could yank out his spine with the edge of her axe and throw it overboard. She's known plenty of cruel men in her time, no doubt, but none had left such a lasting impression, none had instilled themselves so much in the back of her mind as for her to grow to _hate_ them. She's never met the man, but she feels bile rise with just the merest allusion to him.

"He knows _nothing_ ," she tells him, and even she is surprised by the force of her words, and she swallows down the anger in favor of something that's of better use to her brother. "He's dead, like as not." It's not a lie, Stannis's army could well have crushed him by now, there's no true way of knowing, but she likes the thought. "I'm the only one who knows anything," she tells him, not looking away from his eyes, even as she considers glancing about for her washing basin. "We'll do it in here, alright? Not out with the other men. No one will know a thing."

Theon swallows, but his eyes don't drop from hers and it's the first time in a long time he's looked this lucid. "You'll know, " he starts, "you'll see and - "

She doesn't let him continue, knows he'll only drive himself further into madness if she lets him go on. "I'm your big sister, Theon," she says to him, "it's my job to know."

\---

A couple of the mates heat the water for her, and Qarl brings her her rum, and Theon just stands by the bed, occasionally chewing on the bits of hardbread she'd forced upon him and looking askance. Asha sighs, takes a swig, and then nods him over. "Come on, then."

Theon doesn't move for several moments, but she pretends she doesn't notice, rolling up her sleeves and tucking her hair behind her ears. It's getting long - she'll have to have Lorren cut it again at some point - but there's time for that yet. She feels the water with the tips of her fingers, finding it not particularly hot, but warm enough to serve, and as she wipes her hand on the side of her tunic, Theon's quiet steps creak across the floorboards, until he's standing next to her.

Asha glances up at him, tries to look reassuring without seeming overtly concerned, and he meets her eyes with much less hesitation than she's been used to of late. He looks like he wants to say something, protest in some way, but either he changes his mind, or the words just refuse to push past his lips, because he swallows back whatever breath they might have left on. He still doesn't look away, though, and Asha counts that as a point in her favor, standing up to place herself in front of him. Hands going to the tie of his cloak without a moment of hesitation.

As the thick, black material falls to the floor, he looks like he wants to duck away, to shove her off and crawl back into his corner. He doesn't move.

She gets his tunic off after that, pulls it off his sharp shoulders and down his rail-thin arms, and then his undershirt, revealing the wretched mess of his chest. Half his skin hangs off of him, the other half flayed away to reveal the pink flesh beneath, and she swallows back the sickness and doesn't pay him more than a few cursory glances before continuing on - like she barely notices, like it doesn't matter. It does matter, it matters a lot, but she doesn't know how to communicate that without paining him further.

When she reaches his breeches, slipping her fingers into the waistline, he jerks a little bit, like he wants to stumble back, but is forcing himself not to. "Don't," he starts, and Asha's prepared to argue, before he continues. "Don't look."

She faces forward as she nods, stepping closer, and keeps her eyes locked to his as she unlaces and removes the last of his clothing, letting it pool at his feet, then moves back a bit to allow him to step into the wash basin. And she can't quite help it, can't quite keep her promises the way she should; as he sinks down, she looks.

Her stomach rolls and she closes her eyes, not making a sound. She's anything but squeamish, and she can face this as she's faced anything - expression flat, unconcerned by any of the horrors before her, any of the horrors she's committed herself. This is no different, she tells herself.

This is her little brother.

She sinks to her knees before the basin, as he curls up under cover of the cooling water. He may be mad, but he's no fool, and though she keeps her mouth a flat line and her eyes straight ahead, he sees it anyway, and looks down. "You - "

Asha doesn't let him finish, just threads her finger through his hair and presses her forehead to his own, blinking away whatever weakness wants to come out. He squirms back, trying to get away from her - whether out of some sense of betrayal or shame, she knows not - but she doesn't let him go anywhere, just tightens the grip of her fingers. She doesn't know what to say.

What comes out is, "I haven't a cock, either, you know," spoken in a quiet, unwavering voice, "and I get on just fine."

That seems to puncture any resistance, any pretense of modesty or shame, and he sinks down further, leaning against her like his will to support his own weight has left completely, and she feels wetness press against her cheek. She doesn't think it's from the bath.

\---

The mast repairs take the longest, but they'd brought enough food and water to last them through the setback and on through the rest of the journey. The crew works long days, and after Asha's spent a few doing naught but lazing in her chambers with Theon, she's itching to join them. Qarl gives her a look, but says not a thing when she scales the foremast, yelling orders to the men below her. With a bit of encouragement, Theon comes out on deck, too - not in any shape to be of help, of course, but the way he leans against the rail, alternately staring out to see and watching them work, even sometimes eating what he's offered, makes Asha feel a bit better, regardless.

The nights are cool and salty, and they drink off a hard day's work, Asha pulling Qarl off into some corner or another, because he doesn't sleep in her room any longer. Seems he thinks fucking in front of Theon will send him back into his shocked, terrified state, and Asha's not half as willing to chance it as she is humor him. 

Theon sleeps on the other side of her cot, like he sometimes had in their youth, and though he doesn't seem terribly enthused by any bit of the situation, he no longer seems quite as ruined as he had before. One late night, or early morning, when she yawns herself into half wakefulness, he looks over - head pillowed next to hers - and says, "I didn't save you, did I?" to her half-open eyes. "I never could have saved you."

Asha can't quite tell if she's dreaming, can't quite tell if that matters, so she just curls closer, dragging her fingers through the strands of his hair and trying to stay warm. "No, Theon," she mumbles. He maybe nods, curling closer to her chest, but she falls asleep before she can manage to figure it out.

\---

They can see Pyke in the distance today, and as they stand there on the bow of the ship, shoulder to slumped shoulder, she turns to him and asks, conversationally, "Do you still want to die?"

He doesn't jolt the way she expects him to, just looks over at her with his pale eyes, seeming more confused than shocked - like he hadn't even thought about it. After a moment, he turns back toward the sea.

"I want to go home."

But if he's looking at Pyke when he say as much, he doesn't seem to be seeing it, doesn't speak with blessed relief or anticipation for the end of their journey. He looks tired and he looks troubled, but not afraid, and that's maybe the saving grace that lets her reply the way she does, as casually as she can manage. "We are going home."

He looks back at her then, and there's something long forgotten pulling at the edges of his expression, like maybe his face is trying to twist into something it no longer knows how to be. Something like knowing amusement. "This isn't home," he says, and he doesn't need to specify that it's not _his_ home, for her to hear it. He turns then, looking in the opposite direction, the direction they'd long left from, and she follows his eyes.

Asha sighs. "They'd kill you the moment you reached the gates of Winterfell," she tells him, but she's not even sure if she wants to argue this, if she even should.

Theon doesn't quite smile in reaction, but it's a near thing. "It's likely."

And he doesn't look back at Pyke until they get there.

\---

She gets The Reader to make the arrangements for her - for him - shortly after they arrive, and a competent crew and captain are gathered within a few days, until they're standing back on the dock they'd only just arrived at, staring at the small, well-worn vessel floating before them. She's no _Sea Bitch_ , but Theon says she'll do just fine - though his standards aren't exactly high. Anything that will get him off this floating rock, she supposes - which he never says, but she can hear spoken in his voice in the back of her head, anyhow.

"And what about Mother?" she asks, after putting it off for a bit. Mother who always asks for him, but who Asha knows - as she's sure Theon does - is likely better off left with the image of the little boy she still holds so dear, instead of a true look at what he is now.

Theon shrugs slightly. "Tell her I drowned," he says after a moment. "That I returned to the sea."

Asha raises her eyebrows, feigning surprise. "And lie to my own mother, Theon? What low, savage morals have those Northerners taught you?" And maybe the joke hits too close to the bleeding wound that's far from healed, that will like as not never heal, but Theon takes it in stride. He hasn't quite regrown his old smile, but his humor is still there somewhere, hiding under the surface.

"It may yet prove to be the truth," he tells her, as the captain who's ship he'll be taking motions that they're ready to go as soon as he is. "There is plenty of sea between here and the coast."

The fact that he can jest even that much makes her sick with relief, like maybe he'll survive yet, even without her watching over his shoulder at every odd moment. Asha smirks at him, lightly patting at his back, but not giving him much more of a farewell embrace than that. This is not a true goodbye, she tells herself, even though she rather suspects that it is. She'll not act that way, though. She'd held him close enough times in the last month - held him up. It's time for him to hold himself.

"You'll come back, won't you? Someday?" It's not false question, but it's not exactly a true one either. She can't quite bring herself to believe she'll ever see him again, but she also can't believe the opposite.

"To visit the Queen of the Iron Islands?" he asks, with something that sounds, to her ears, stupidly like a sort of pride. A coward's pride. A little brother's pride. "Yes," he says, "I'll come back."

As he climbs the ramp up onto the deck, Asha can't quite help but call after him - though she's not sure what good she means it to do - "What is dead may never die!" If she anticipates hearing the words continued, she's disappointed - but she's doesn't, and isn't, really.

In fact, the knowing little closed-mouthed smile he gives in response - like not saying the words means more than saying the words ever could - actually brings her some measure of comfort.


End file.
